Marvin

Marvin, also known as Marvin the Paranoid Android, is a robot manufactured by the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation. He is equipped with "Genuine People Personalities" technology which is designed to make him more like a person.

Character

Marvin is a severely depressed robot. He's regularly so depressed that, when he gets bored and talks to other computers, they commit suicide and die, as was the case for a robotically controlled police ship (which resulted in the asphyxiation of two policemen) and a bridge which killed everyone on it. This is due to the "Genuine People Personality" he received while he was being manufactured by the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation (Marvin's is a personality prototype). Marvin also dislikes the cheerful GPP doors that were built into the spaceship Heart of Gold.

Marvin's brain is the size of a planet (in fact because of this, he is eternally bored because nothing takes up his entire mind), enabling him to calculate the probability of just about anything. However, when he bothers to share the probability to those around him, they tend to ignore him because he usually just ends up depressing them.

In his spare time, which has been legendary because any time that he commits to thought processes necessary to perform any assigned duties takes up such a small percentage of his brain, and with all of the traveling through space and time performing assigned duties have rendered him many times over the span of the universe, he has been known to write and sing songs; just not very good ones and not very well. When he dies in "So Long and Thanks for all the Fish," at 37 times older than the universe, his last words are "I think I feel good about it."

Physical Appearance

In the TV series, Marvin's physical appearance was approximately that of a tall humanoid from Earth, with angular features. In the movie, Marvin is shorter with a spherical head.

Quotes by Marvin

• "Life? Don't talk to me about life."
• "I think you ought to know I'm feeling very depressed."
• Arthur: I lived on a beautiful planet once.
  Marvin: Did it have oceans?
  Arthur: Oh yes; great big rolling oceans.
  Marvin: I hate oceans.
• "Pardon me for breathing, which I never do anyway so I don't know why I bother to say it, oh God, I'm so depressed."
• "I won't enjoy it."
• Marvin: I've been communicating with the ship
  Ford:What did it say?
  Marvin: It hates me
  

Marvin's Lullaby

How I Hate the Night, also known as Marvin's Lullaby, is "a short dolorous ditty of no tone, or indeed tune."

Now the world has gone to bed

Darkness won't engulf my head

I can see by infra-red

How I hate the night

Now I lay me down to sleep

Try to count electric sheep

Sweet dream wishes you can keep

How I hate the night

Behind the scenes

• In the radio version and the TV series, Marvin was voiced by Stephen Moore, and in the TV version, the actor inside the Marvin costume was David Learner. Also, in the film, the original Marvin robot can be seen in line at the Vogon offices, thrown in as an inside joke for fans who have seen the TV series.
• Stephen Moore also recorded four single songs as the Marvin character, release on two 45 rpm records. These were "Marvin" and "Metal Man," followed by "Marvin, I Love You" and "Reasons To Be Miserable." The female vocals for "Marvin, I Love You" were provided by Kimi Wong.
• In the 2005 film adaptation of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Marvin is voiced by Alan Rickman, but the costume is worn by Warwick Davis.
• Douglas Adams told that Marvin was intended to be a minor joke, but after the robot's voice actor was hired he eventually had to write some script for him time to time.